Broken Excuses

The world today is one filled with brokenness, idol worship, and lies. There are those who are constantly beating on us that we are not good enough and we can do better. There is bar that has been set by the world that says you must achieve these things in life to be considered successful. The problem with the bar that has been set is that it’s not a bar that God has set. The bar that God sets for us is to love God, be Christ like and to love others has He has loved us. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:15-17) “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of the God overcomes the world” (1 John 5:1-4)

One of the many problems in the world today is that people don’t love God and thus don’t love others. People are more worried about keeping up or being better than everyone else. They worship their status, job, house, vehicle, money anything that makes their status look better, trying to reach this imaginary bar that the world has set for us. The challenge that we as Christians face today is all the marketing and publicity that is in the world making all these idols preeminent over God. Instead of worshiping these idols that you think are going to make you feel better we need to come to God. The problem with idols is that they lie. They make you think you are something or someone you really aren’t. But God doesn’t want or require you meet any other bar than to love him and love others. It seems so simple but if the world were based on just those two things we would no longer be this broken world that full of lies and excuses that says we aren’t good enough.

For us to break this sin and influences of the world we must come to Jesus! Isn’t it humbling to be told that we must come to Jesus? But truth of the matter is that there are so many other things that people turn to in the world other than Jesus to find their worth. When you hear the words “Come to Me” (Matt 11:28), do you think something must happen to me for that to happen? It does… You must allow the Holy Spirit to show you and reveal Himself to you. But we are blocked by the world today and have our idols that we worship and hold on to that keeps the Holy Spirit from coming into our hearts and transforming us. The good news is that the Holy Spirit will search out that immovable object within us, but He cannot budge it unless we are willing to let Him do so.

How often do we turn back to our worldly desires of our flesh and make up an excuse that we need something to make us better? Or we have asked God for something and gone away thinking “I asked and God totally gave me what I asked for”? But in the end actually going away with nothing, all the while God is standing there with His arms wide open to take you in and for you to take Him in. It’s hard to imagine how tiresome it must be for Jesus to continue to stand there with His arms open waiting lovingly for us to come to Him.